Level 1

4 points

Rotating pictures in Preview

A co-author and I are writing a book. Research entailed visiting many archives, and photographing pages of cellar books, and of wine catalogues. Naturally enough, pages were photographed in order: at each archive, oldest books first, and within each book the pages from oldest entry to newest.

We have about fifteen thousand pictures, my folder structure on my computer being the same as that on his.

With Snow-Leopard Preview I would go to the folder for that archive, command-A command-O, and all the pictures would open. I could scroll from one picture to the next, either gesturing within the sidebar, or with appropriate keys. About half of all pictures needed rotating, done with command-R. So far, so good. Indeed, so excellent.

Now to my new Mac, a 27" beauty that came with OS Lion. The large screen is to see big pictures at the same time as editing the words of the book. And again, command-A, command-R, and scroll away. Ooooh: that picture is at ninety degrees: command-R. Annoying rhythm-breaking dialog box asks whether I want to unlock it (no, never ever change my original pictures, just never) or duplicate it (or, uselessly, cancel). Duplicate. So now there is a new window with just that picture, rotated. About half of all pictures need rotating, so quite quickly my screen is a disorganised mess of one-picture windows.

I have owned a Mac since 1988: please let this not be Apple’s Mr Clippy moment. Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to the Apple store I go. I get some sympathy, and some agreement that for my purposes new Preview doesn’t work well. Suggestion: download the old Preview from somewhere. So to my old Mac, now somebody else’s; archive Preview (and TextEdit); FTP up; back to my machine; FTP down and unpack.

Preview has a long complicated error message, the crunchy bit perhaps being “Library not loaded: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MeshKit.framework/Versions/A/MeshKit”.

(Aside: TextEdit works, which I hoped was great—no more over-writing my files behind my back. Alas the new TextEdit in the applications folder is super-locked and can’t be overwritten.)

Back to Preview. Please, how can I have a bulk open of pictures, in the right order, which are not altered by Preview, which are easily rotated (no dialog box), and which post-rotation remain in the right order? No new files; and no changes to the old (=only) files. Rephrased, Snow-Leopard Preview was really good: please could I have it back?

iMac

Posted on Nov 7, 2011 11:51 AM

123 replies

Tony T1

Level 6

10,247 points

Nov 23, 2011 5:17 AM in response to jdaw1

jdaw1 wrote:

Preview is used to see (even to see rotated) very many files.

What I'm having trouble understanding is that the change to the workflow from:

Open File, ⌘R, Next

Open File, ⌘R, ⌘L, next

Does not seem to be as big a deal. I understand that you (really) do not like this change, but when you issue a command to Rotate Right, you are indeed giving an explicit command to change the file.

Tony T1

Level 6

10,247 points

Nov 23, 2011 5:22 AM in response to jdaw1

jdaw1 wrote:

Please could the participants in this marriage make a special rule for Preview. Perhaps it could have an ‘inviolate originals’ tick somewhere? Please?

There is. See "Lock Document", however, If you do, then you won't be able to Rotate Right.

I understand that you see ⌘R as just a view adjustment (similair to zoom), but it's not implemented that way.

Tony T1

Level 6

10,247 points

Nov 23, 2011 5:36 AM in response to mulligans missus

mulligans missus wrote:

I have been getting around it by importing my pics into iPhoto (sometimes Apeture) and rotating the files there and saving the changed files to a desktop folder, and then they are rotated when I need to insert them.

How does this work? The images will be saved as rotated, not as original (what the OP wants).

Anyway, this is no different than saving the images to a Desktop Folder ("Duplicate"), and then opening the Desktop Folder in Preview to view and rotate (work on copy, not original as we do not want to save chages and trash when finished)

jdaw1 Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 23, 2011 5:52 AM in response to Tony T1

(New posters: if you say that it is terrible then Apple will ignore you. Don’t be rude about the new wife. Even if you hope that the new wife will be abandoned sooner than was Mrs Clippy, being rude about her will be met with unhelpful defensiveness. Big companies are slow to admit errors. Instead claim — cross fingers behind back and lie — that it is nice, but “could be even nicer”. A necessary lie.)

Tony,

You are defending the Apple line. (You started doing so just after I commented on a story at the Financial Times: I do not know whether the timing was concidence.) So please help me by suggesting how I can now do something that was easy under the previous Snow Leopard.

• Lots of pictures to be viewed, opened from Finder with command-A command-O.
• Files not to change. My files, inviolate. It is important that the files be the originals.
• Not having to revert, one at a time, petty changes to hundreds of my files.
• Pictures are to be seen in the correction orientation, without tilting head, nor tilting monitor.
• No annoying pop-up dialogs.
• Pictures to remain in the one window, in order.

Please, rather than repeatedly praising the new model, how do I do that? If it is impossible, pleae acknowledge the loss of functionality to Tim Cook.

Thank you.

PS: Command-R, command-L, means that my files are no longer original. In a differenty context that has legal consequences. Original files, untampered.

PPS: do any of the new posters have access to very old versions of Preview? I want to test Preview from each old OS, in the hope that one will work under Lion.

Tony T1

Level 6

10,247 points

Nov 23, 2011 6:09 AM in response to jdaw1

You are defending the Apple line.

Why?, but because I agree that the user should not use an original file as a temp file?

jdaw1 wrote:

So please help me by suggesting how I can now do something that was easy under the previous Snow Leopard.

Well, since any suggestion requires you changing your work habits (and we're fully aware that you are resistant to changes of any kind), I'm afraid that there is no solution in Lion (for you), so just continue tilting your head to view the files 😁

But for other users not so resistant to change, if you insist on using an original file as a temp file, just remember to return the file to it's original state (i.e. if you are issuing a command to change the file with ⌘R, just remember to issue a command to ⌘L), however, this is a very bad practice. If you do not want to change the original file, copy to a temporary folder on your desktop first, and when done delete the temporary folder.

Tony T1

Level 6

10,247 points

Nov 23, 2011 6:16 AM in response to jdaw1

jdaw1 wrote:

You are defending the Apple line. (You started doing so just after I commented on a story at the Financial Times: I do not know whether the timing was concidence.)

Actually, it is a coincidence.

But for an article more on point to this discussion, see:

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: the Ars Technica review - Document model

"Despite decades of public exposure to personal computers, human expectations and habits have stubbornly refused to align with the traditional model of creating, opening, and saving documents."

"Not every change is meant to be saved, after all. The practice of speculatively making radical changes to a document with the comfort of knowing that none of those changes are permanent until we hit ⌘S is something experienced Mac users take for granted and may be loath to give up."

This was not a trival change by Apple. I'm afraid that your hope of getting an option to have it your way are slim

Stoaty

Level 1

4 points

Nov 23, 2011 7:40 AM in response to Tony T1

I do see both sides to this. To Apple (and probably most users) the change to the image file is trivial - it is just a change to the meta-data describing the orientation of the image - probably a few bytes of data. Most users would not want to "save" changing the orientation of an image if it is wrong and prefer the one step approach. And no doubt, Apple had a big focus group to discuss this aspect of the user interface. It certainly would not have been done by an over zealous programmer.

Unfortunately, it has raised the valid issue of users being in control of their files. I do agree with jdaw1. It is the users file and it should be their choice to change it - or not. And not all changes are meant to be saved.

I do not think having an option in Preview to autosave changes is difficult. Preview is not a complicated application and it is the autosave functionality in Lion that enables recovery of previous versions. But the chances of Preview being changed are slim.

Nov 23, 2011 8:31 AM in response to Tony T1

Tony T1 wrote:

we have gotten used to using a file that is opened as a temporary file, only to be made permenant with a ⌘S. Well, that was just bad practice

Oh right. 20 years of bad practice. Excuse me.

I need to be able to open a file in Preview, play around with it in all kinds of ways, often undoing or re/doing, ON THE SAME FILE, not some other version of it. I want to work on one file at a time because remember, I may be using that file to write a report in another application (and I only want to have one file open in that application too - the one I CAN SEE ON MY SCREEN.

Then when I've finished playing around with I need to be able to hit command + s and save it.

Or not, if I don't want to save it.

Or save it with a different name, to a different place, keeping the original file unchanged.

Sorry about those bad practices that I've been doing all these years. How could I have been so dumb? I guess I'm not good enough for Lion.

Oh and I don't want my files to be locked, ever. Not even after 10 years. Why would I? What is the point of my files being locked ? I have more than ten years of archived files that I refer back to from time to time. I don't want them to be locked. I cannot for the life of me understand why they should be,

Tony T1

Level 6

10,247 points

Nov 23, 2011 1:12 PM in response to Tom in London

Tom in London wrote:

I need to be able to open a file in Preview, play around with it in all kinds of ways, often undoing or re/doing, ON THE SAME FILE

Exactly what Verions if for. And if you want to revert to a version that you were "playing around with" yesterday, last week, or even last month, you can.

Or save it with a different name, to a different place, keeping the original file unchanged.

Also covered in Versions. File->Export As.

Nov 23, 2011 1:22 PM in response to Tony T1

Tony T1 wrote:

Tom in London wrote:

I need to be able to open a file in Preview, play around with it in all kinds of ways, often undoing or re/doing, ON THE SAME FILE

Exactly what Verions if for. And if you want to revert to a version that you were "playing around with" yesterday, last week, or even last month, you can.

I seem to be talking to the wall here. I said THE SAME FILE. Not another version of it. The same file.

I hope that is now clear.

jdaw1 Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 23, 2011 1:47 PM in response to Tony T1

Versions? In a typical day on my rubbish Windoze work computer I use about a dozen spreadsheets. If that were an Apple machine, then insisting that I revert some of those would be but a minor burden. I could live with that.

But Preview is a fundamentally different thing: it is used to view, not to construct. And (in my happier S-L life) I would open hundreds of JPGs at a time, whizz through them, digitally rotating almost as if being easy for the user was of any importance (silly me!), see what I want to see, and then close without saving. Inviolate originals.

My Snow-Leopard Mac was a pleasure to use. Now I am paranoid about not doing anything that would cause Apple, who have deprived me of control of my machine, from altering the files I want inviolate. Pleasure has become paranoia.

Tim Cook: hear your users. Pleasure deleted, replaced with paranoia and neck-ache. Is it really the user’s fault that isn’t seen as progress?

Tony T1

Level 6

10,247 points

Nov 23, 2011 2:44 PM in response to jdaw1

jdaw1 wrote:

But Preview is a fundamentally different thing: it is used to view, not to construct.

ok, there's the problem. I now see your confusion, as the name of the App, "Preview" leads you to believe that Preview is only an image viewer. Preview is also an image editor

You should look for a 3rd party image viewer

Tony T1

Level 6

10,247 points

Nov 23, 2011 2:57 PM in response to Tom in London

Tom in London wrote:

I said THE SAME FILE. Not another version of it. The same file.

Well, sorry, but you can no longer work on a file as if it were a temp file. You have no choice with Lion (and chances are slim that this will change, but hey, who knows). Either stay with SL, or move to another OS X. (You can switch to an App that does not have Versions now, but that will likely change when they update).

jdaw1 Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 23, 2011 11:01 PM in response to Tony T1

Translation: Apple has changed. Apple has removed a way of working to which you have been become accustomed over the twenty-three years that you have owned a Mac. In doing so we have destroyed your workflow. Tough; get used it; Apple is now big and can make the rules.

Meanwhile, do any users have access to old (perhaps very old) versions of Preview? Maybe one will work under Lion. Please compress; upload somewhere; and send me the location.

jdaw1 Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 23, 2011 11:53 PM in response to jdaw1

Have any readers experience of Xee?

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

Rotating pictures in Preview